-- John Pilger, Australian journalist
The news that comes out of Iraq is uncontested. Briefly, U.S. hyper-imperialists whose forces are occupying Iraq with an Israeli Sharonian methodology, fascist mentality, and a Nazi modality, are splendidly failing to impose colonialism on Iraq, and with this failure, the grandiose project of Caliph Bush for a Mesopotamian conquest is gradually disintegrating, right from its ideological and military foundations.
No matter how often and how intense the U.S. of Wolfowitz claims success, its impotence to subdue an Iraqi uprising in a revolutionary mode against occupation is now a shining reality. If the U.S. is not failing, how can you then explain its frantic behavior to find solutions, any solutions, to its occupation problems? How can you explain an occupation authority that continues to hide in “Saddam’s Palaces”, fortified to deter attack”? How can you explain a fearsome occupation force that continues to hide behind prefabricated concrete walls and razor wires? How can you explain the inability of the U.S. to find volunteers who could relieve them from the relentless pressure of the resistance? In the end, how can you explain the continuation of war after George Bush proclaimed it ended?
Can the U.S. invent ingenious ways to delay failure or stifle the Iraqi resistance? No, the U.S. cannot invent ingenious ways to achieve that target, but it can invent ruses, only those ruses will never work when they are obvious and depending on external factors. When the U.S. invented the ruse of Saddam’s “prohibited weapons” to invade Iraq and after that it actually invaded it based on the false premise of that ruse, the casual observer would conclude that ruses work if properly executed. A close observation, however, will fundamentally alter that conclusion by adding that the ruse has worked not because of its validity, rather because of its unipolarity -- the U.S. was the sole decision-maker capable of rationalizing and waging war without opposition. If a hoodlum holding a gun attacks you under the pretext that you once insulted his friend, and asks you for compensation, would you then agree to give him what he wanted because of his ruse, or because of the gun? To conclude, it is entirely different after you invade, occupy, and stand on foreign territory, because we now have two decision-makers: the invader and the invaded.
Let us now review the latest ruse where the U.S. proposed that Iraq would regain a nominal sovereignty after an “election” by June 2004. Does Richard Perle, Lewis Libby, or Paul Wolfowitz, really believe that a farcical election whose fixed results made to endorse occupation, or not fixed but preemptively manipulated to insure that pro-occupation candidates win it, is a way to pacify a country resisting conquest?
As for the Iraqi “voters”, what a farce when they go to the voting booths blindfolded, not knowing what secret agreements their unelected and Washington appointed, “Iraqi Governing Council” [IGC] (who have never governed anything, and whose many members are on the payroll of the U.S.) had made in their name. If you add to that, the glamorous electioneering campaigns (Boris Yeltsin’s Russian style) that Madison Avenue produced for various fraudulent regimes around the world, the picture will be complete. Here we go: a trivial Hollywood-esque election becomes the long awaited Iraqi “democracy” that George Bush promised that Iraqis could have after he leads them out from Saddam’s horrible dictatorship and right into the beauty of colonialism.
You can almost smell the stench of secret agreements between the U.S. and the IGC the moment you know that the occupying authority did not announce the deal on “ending occupation” at a joint press conference with IGC, but it allowed the IGC to be in charge of the announcement – separately and unexpectedly. This is a clever maneuver intended to shield the U.S. from the potential consequences of the agreement, and to dissociate itself from a perceived weakening of will in front of an effective resistance. In essence, the agreement re-confirmed the role of the United States as the sole source of authority in Iraq, while it gave the IGC the ungrateful task of promoting the concept of continuing occupation as an initial process for independence!
Here is the whole stench: after the election and creation of the provisional government, “Foreign troops would stay only by invitation. The occupation shall end.” [Italics added]  Is there any word in any vocabulary that can describe such a masterpiece of deceptive garbage, where an occupation imposed by force, transforms itself to an occupation by invitation!
Please, IGC, can you tell us, as to whose attention, are you going to extend the invitation for permanent occupation, and would it carry the diction, “RSVP”?
I am not sure who can buy this rubbish of an “exit strategy” farce where an invited U.S. continues with the occupation under a different guise while giving its appointed “IGC” an opportunity to show that it negotiated to end the occupation. With this, the U.S. hopes that the IGC would finally gain “relevance” and “legitimacy” it never earned, and that would pave the way for pre-chosen candidates to win, thus legitimizing the occupation by the Iraqis themselves under the pointed guns of the occupation force.
Two questions on the side of speculation. First: do you think that this theatrical move to end occupation so suddenly means that the U.S. is about to end its strategic quest in taking Iraq? In other words, do you think that the U.S. who is planning to invest in Iraq $200 billion in 10 years (mainly to revamp and explore new oilfields, the hyper-imperialist object of desire) is really intent to end occupation? Before we loose sleep on this issue, Rumsfeld has already ended any speculation on “sovereignty” as opposed to occupation when he told Agence France-Press on 11/16/2003, “This has nothing to do with coalition troops in Iraq.”
Furthermore, as the occupation is planning to subsist by other means, international and pro-occupation Iraqi figures will try to make it succeed in the new form just to put an end to the Iraqi question. However, one has to consider that even if the U.S. is intent to make the move to nominal sovereignty, it is not going to do it without the IGC agreeing to extensive military bases, economic concessions, ownership of oilfields, and establishing relations with Israel. Is this scheme workable? In theory, it might; because the same members (or surrogates) of the council who accepted invasion are going to be the candidates running for office; and with a crafty election where Shiite Arabs (with pro-occupation religious leaders) and Kurds (the Kurds stand to gain in all scenarios) can dupe their constituents and win easily.
Are we seeing a replay of the old British game in Iraq after WWI? Yes, we are. Iraq would re-experience the creation of a nominal sovereignty and a crypto-independent government at the service of foreign powers, thus the long planned game of hyper-imperialism will finally come to fruition.
Again, is this ruse workable? That depends on two factors and how will they interact. First: the invader will try to consolidate occupation by employing colonialist violence to quell dissent. Second factor: the invaded will try to consolidate resistance and employ anti-occupation violence to eject the occupiers. Remember: France in Vietnam, France in Algeria, the U.S. in Vietnam, and Israel in the Palestinian West Bank! Rumsfeld and company can only fool themselves that a replay of a different Dien Bien Phu, cannot happen to hyper-imperialists.
Before this amusing version of Bushesque Iraqi sovereignty, the U.S. tried with another ruse: U.N. resolution 1551, which sanctioned the U.S. continuing occupation and encouraged nations to send troops to Iraq. Aside from failing to alleviate acute imperialistic emphysema, aggravated by apprehension and a mortifying sense of defeat, the resolution was a true oddity.
Although the U.N. passed it under U.S. pressure, the U.S. is unable to reap its benefits for one principle reason: the world has only agreed to pay lip service to an imperialistic imposition. Still, the resolution is stunning -- it explicitly exposed the limits of U.S. power and its petulance in demanding help in occupied Iraq, just seven months after all those triumphalistic hurrahs. The transformation of the U.S. posturing from sheer arrogance to plain arrogance, and from omnipotence to impotence has never been a sudden phenomenon, but one rapid process where many diverse factors on the theatre of conquest itself, dictated its genesis and evolution. Towering among these factors is the anti-occupation Iraqi resistance that U.S. hyper-imperialists indulge to label with everything imaginable except resistance and Iraqi.
Aside from developments in Iraq, other factors related to the current situation of the United States itself could accelerate the collapse of the colonialist project. The transition of the United States from a British/American land-grabbing colonialist system, through an aggressive American imperialism with partial world domination, to its current form: Zionist hyper-imperialism, in search of world domination by means of military intervention or economic punishment, did not happen without a heavy price paid by world nations including the American people themselves.
The latest transition where foreign (Israeli) objectives and domestic (Zionist) agendas replaced or took an absolute preeminence over genuine American national interests has torn the very fabric of the United States. It did not only transform the U.S. into an international outlaw, but also caused massive erosion and wide fractures in already weakened democratic institutions because of political apathy, the dominance of a corrupted two-party system, cronyism, power of money, and manipulation of information. The result is a systematic imposition of backward cultural models and medieval obscurantism on a modern vibrant society, thus greatly degrading traditional notions of freedom and freethinking, all necessary for a true functional democracy and its intelligent options.
Domestically, that helped in the establishment of an aggressive as much as regressive political-theological and cultural totalitarianism under the guise of “patriotism” and “security” where ignorance, jingoism, and banality are dominating the national dialogue on issues of substance. Internationally, it placed the awesome American military machine on a speeding train that lost its logical tracks and now it is on a collision with most nations on earth. Most importantly, it downgraded the American status from an imperialistic superpower with some successful democratic attributes to something very similar to a loathsome criminal organization. However, a backlash against deception is possible as an increasing internal opposition to U.S. military interventionism coupled with the impossibility of Bush and his Zionist posse to continue with the hoax of the millennium, could forcefully lead to the downfall of Sharonism in the U.S. and maybe for calls to the de-Israelization of U.S. foreign policy.
To introduce my argument on the imperialist failure in Iraq, I must note that altruism or idealism never motivated U.S. interventions abroad. Calculated interest and solidification of its imperialistic hegemony were the sole motive for U.S. interventionism, a fact that we can verify by counting the millions the U.S. killed in its wars of aggression to achieve and consolidate its prominence, expansion, and its capitalistic exploitation or control of world resources. The U.S. intervention in Iraq, however, differs from all its past interventions in one major respect: U.S. Zionist and Israeli equations dictated all of its bogus motives and agenda. In this way, an ideological fascist minority of unelected and/or appointed officials in control of the United States employed all types of scandalous fabrications, lies, and blackmail to wage a criminal war of conquest before the watching eyes of the entire world.
Essentially, the Wolfowitzian Bush Administration that includes influential members connected to the Zionist-Israeli project, who eyed the occupation of Iraq and the attack on the entire Middle East long before George Bush became president, told the world that it was going to invade and conquer Iraq regardless of universal anti-war opposition.
What made this unprecedented challenge possible in an age where classical predatory Western colonialism is a ghost from a distant past, is the U.S. perfect knowledge that any power resisting it, could do nothing about it -- especially, in military terms. On top of all that, Iraq, after eight years of Saddam’s American proxy war against Iran, and 12 years of U.S. wars and crippling sanctions under which even graphite pencils were prohibited, had no military capability whatsoever or WMD to resist or repel a takeover. Therefore, the absence of deterrence, be it Iraqi or international, was the only factor that made U.S. unprovoked military aggression feasible. Assume that Iraq really had all those scary weapons that Blair, Powell and Bush talked about, including a couple of hypothetical nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles ready for launch on minutes notice, do you still think the U.S. would have invaded Iraq or sent its soldiers over there in the first place?
The answer is no.
That is why I am taking the clear position that in a world in which an association of three nuclear thugs (U.S., UK, and Israel) can invent any ruse to blackmail and attack any country at will, nuclear proliferation is mandatory. If George Bush defends the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to bear firearms then we advocate the natural rights of nations to develop nuclear weapons as deterrence, and that must persist as long as Israel, the U.S., Russia, the UK, France, China, India, and Pakistan continue to own them. The idea of a dangerous bigot and unstable “Dr. Strangelove” with pretentious “moral values” and superficial claims of a “higher civilization” deciding on the fate of other nations is now invalid.
Some would object to my position as an extremist vision dictated more by emotions (as I am an Iraqi-American) than by reason. Well, as far as concerning emotions, no doubt, I am saddened to see my adoptive country ruthlessly destroy my beautiful native land, and to see the American part of my hyphenated identity attack and occupy the Iraqi part. It feels as if the self turned against itself. Further, are we, Iraqi-Americans, required to consecrate our exclusive American part of the identity at the expense of a naturally conjugated duality? Are we required to exercise farfetched neutrality in honor of violence and the spurious idea of hyper-imperialistic “nationalism”? Finally, and most importantly, I am saddened for all those who died and will die in Iraq because of U.S. aggression.
No. It is not about emotions. It is about exclusive principles that are inherently connected to the dignity and survival of humanity, people, and nations; it is about permanently changed equations where George Bush, hence the U.S., divided the world into good and evil and then concocted the “preemption” fraud as a cover for imperialistic incursions and conquests. In the case of Iraq, events showed that moral opposition, peace and anti-war movements, world opinion, and opposition of governments could not stop wars of aggression advertised for over 18 long months.
If no one can stop premeditated aggression, then only “Mutual Assured Destruction” can.
We can prove this assertion immediately by pointing to the USSR, its successor Russia and China vs. the U.S.; Israel vs. the Arabs, (although Arabs have no weapons of mass destruction); Pakistan vs. India; and India vs. China. In addition, one has to remember that peace as an ideal is not synonymous with, nor does it coincide with a “Zionist Pax Americana” now enshrined as an American doctrine envisioning perpetual war and supremacy on the world in general but specifically on the Arabs.
Because I repeatedly emphasize, to the point of redundancy, the patent and visceral enmity that the Bush Administration reserves for the Arabs, I, therefore, have to address a fundamental element of intended hyper-imperialist confusion that forms the core of all the problems vexing the Middle East thus bringing the region to endless wars.
The following is a concise primer. Despite the noisy clamor raised by Israel, Zionists and Christian Fundamentalists (Bush himself is a Christian Fundamentalist) against Islam as a violent religion according to the possible theory that Muslim fanatics were behind the attack against the United States on 9/11, the Bush Junta is, in reality, not against Islam as a religion. It is only against Muslims as people but not any Muslims. Precisely, it is only against Muslim Arabs, not because they are Muslims but because they are Arabs. Therefore, it is only against Arabs, because they are Arabs, be they Muslim, Christian, Jewish (yes, there are many Arabs who still practice Judaism because it is a religion) polytheists, animists, or pagans. Further, it is not against any Arabs, it is against the Arabs who live near to a geographically explosive focal point (Israel), the more distant an Arab individual or state is away from that focal point (e.g., Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, the less is the hostility. Finally, it is not against the Arabs and Muslim because of racism, prejudice, or hatred –although bigotry as feeble motivation could exist -- but because of an issue that is belonging to a different category -- historical rights as national existence.
Therefore, when you view the denominating sequences I just mentioned, drop the qualifier (Muslim) and keep the noun (Arab), because it is at this conjecture, where Israel enters into the scene.
What conjecture are we referring to, how does this relate to Iraq, and can a cogent analysis explain the U.S. hostility toward the Arabs for the past 55 years that is now culminating with war against them? I shall explain all that, next in part two. We shall also address recent developments in Iraq, such as, how did the Security Council view the attack against the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad? Why the imbalance in reporting and the absence of accurate reports on all Iraqis the U.S. kills and maims daily? Do the life-signs emitted by the Iraqis not register on the “life-scanning devices” of hyper-imperialists, and of the media? Who attacked the U.N. and why? Can we fit Kofi Annan in the critique of the U.N., and is it important that we get him involved in this discussion?
B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org